At-Tayammum and How To Perform It

MV: At-Tayammum is how you get ready for salah by doing wadhu or ablution when water is not available. Tayammum can be used if there is only an enough amount of water for drinking or when the water is damaging to one’s health. If one is not able to do wadhu then he is permitted by Allah (swt) to preform Tayammum.

Allah says in the Quran:

O you who believe! When you intend to offer As-Salat (the prayer), wash your faces and your hands (forearms) up to the elbows, rub (by passing wet hands over) your heads, and (wash) your feet up to ankles . If you are in a state of Janaba (i.e. had a sexual discharge), purify yourself (bathe your whole body). But if you are ill or on a journey or any of you comes from answering the call of nature, or you have been in contact with women (i.e. sexual intercourse) and you find no water, then perform Tayammum with clean earth and rub therewith your faces and hands. Allah does not want to place you in difficulty, but He wants to purify you, and to complete His Favour on you that you may be thankful. (Quran 5:6)

There are seven conditions under which one is unable to find water or, even if he can find it, he cannot use it to make an ablution or ghusl:

He who is one mile away from a source of water makes a tayammum, provided he should make the proper intentions. One mile is equal to four thousand zra’, which equals 1920 meters. It is always fard to look for water when you are in a city.

A sick person can make a tayammum if it is understood that having an ablution, ghusl or moving will worsen the sickness and delay the healing, either from his own experience or from the words of a specialized Muslim doctor who does not commit sins openly.

If a person is too ill to make a ghusl or ablution or cannot find anybody to help him even for money, he will make a tayammum. He who cannot make a tayammum even with help does not perform the namaz, but he performs it when he recovers. It is not wajib for a husband and wife to help each other to make an ablution.

If there is the danger that a person may die or get sick because of cold when he makes a ghusl, if he does not have enough money to go to a bath and has no other alternative, even if he is in a city, he makes a tayammum instead of a ghusl and makes an ablution with water.

If water is close but there is an enemy, a wild or poisonous animal, a fire or a guard near the water, or if he is imprisoned, or if someone threatens him with death or takes away his possessions if he makes an ablution, he makes a tayammum instead and performs the namaz. But since these are caused by creatures, he has to perform his namaz again after he makes a ghusl and ablution.

If a traveler has extra water which he and his comrades need to drink, to clean themselves of najasat or to give to their animals, he makes a tayammum. If he makes a ghusl with the water and performs the namaz with najasat on his clothes it will be accepted, but he will be sinful. If he first makes a tayammum and them removes the najasat, he will have to make a tayammum again. For one cannot make tayammum while there is water. If a person who is junub finds water enough to wash his body partly or to make an ablution, he makes one tayammum for ablution and ghusl. If his ablution breaks after the tayammum, he makes an ablution with the water. When the water poured on the body in ablution and ghusl falls down somewhere [not on one’s clothes], it becomes foul and one cannot drink it. But it can be given to animals to drink. A person who is about to die from thirst buys water from someone who has extra water. If the latter will not sell it, the former takes it by force, by fighting or threatening. Water to be used for ablution cannot be taken by force.

If a person cannot find a bucket or a rope to lift water out of a well, or a person to go down a well for money, he makes a tayammum, and does not have to perform his namaz again when he finds water.